SUMO CAT ENAMEL PINS

Product Description

These Enamel Kitty Pins are purrr…fect for adding to your Enamel Pin collection! Based on three of most famous Sumo Wrestlers of all time – Futubayana (now Futuba-nya-na), Taiho (Tai-kawai-ho) and Chiyonofuji (Chiyo-nya-fuji), where nya means meow and kawai means cute in Japanese – draw out kawa-i to make the cute sound cuter – like Hawa-i!

For those in the Sumo know, the kitty-do is a Chomage, the original man bun designed to mimic no other than the esteemed Gingko leaf and the backer cards are based on vintage Menko (trading) cards. These cards use the same half-tone filter as the cards from the 1940’s and the backs have the kitty name, their standing Yoko-neko-zuna (neko means cat in Japanese), have the actual stats of the Sumo wrestlers, the rock/paper/scissors icon re-imagined as paws and also a personally signed (not printed) by the artist – me! There is also a phrase in Japanese which I will let you figure out.

Originally these trading cards were inserted into cigarette boxes and kids would wait outside of the Japanese version of 7-11’s for them. They used to play Rock/Paper/Scissors with them until they were beat up (which is why very few exist now) but the kids started realizing there was more value in pristine cards and that’s how some savvy marketer created this amazing concept and tradition of trading cards. If you, like me, find this absolutely fascinating, I encourage you to visit this incredible blog – sumocards.blogspot.com run by Ryan Laughton who has been instrumental in helping me design these and fund them on Indiegogo! Thank you Ryan!